Katawa Shoujo: Game Boy Advance Edition [WIP]

[neparij]

Hello everyone!

I’m excited to share a project I’ve been working on: a Game Boy Advance port of Katawa Shoujo! This is a passion project aimed at bringing the heartfelt story and unique charm of Katawa Shoujo to retro hardware enthusiasts and fans of the original visual novel.

TLDR: DEMO

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The goal of Katawa Shoujo: GBA Edition is to reimagine the visual novel experience for the Game Boy Advance while staying true to the original’s art, story, and gameplay. Despite the technical limitations of the GBA, I’m striving to capture the emotional depth and engaging narrative that made the original so special.

Here’s what I’ve implemented so far:

• Character Animations: Smooth fade-ins and sliding transitions to bring characters to life.

  

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• Dialogue System: Faithful to the original UI, including choices with auto-scrolling for longer responses.

  

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• Full OST Conversion: That's was really HARD, but the entire original soundtrack has been converted and optimized for the GBA’s audio hardware, keeping the music intact and authentic.

• Video Cutscenes: Yes, the GBA can even handle video! I’ve included a sample video cutscene to push the hardware to its limits.

• Custom Engine: Based on Butano and built specifically for the GBA, optimized for its hardware quirks.

You can already try out demo builds, which I’ve been uploading regularly to itch.io: https://neparij.itch.io/katawa-shoujo-gba
The latest build contains Act 1: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

[neparij]

Hello again, everyone!

I’ve been hard at work on Katawa Shoujo: GBA Edition, and this update focuses on significant improvements to how sprites are handled, new character additions, and good progress on gameplay mechanics.

Sprite Optimization
Previously, each character used two 4bpp palettes (32 colors in total) for their sprites. While this worked, it introduced limitations on how many characters could be displayed at once and added overhead when managing palette updates.

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Now, I’ve reworked the system to use a shared palette of 128 colors for all characters. This change has several advantages:

• More Characters On Screen: With a unified palette, multiple characters can now appear simultaneously without palette conflicts.

• Performance Gains: Reduces the load on the GBA when updating palettes during scene changes.

• Consistency: Characters now look more cohesive, with smoother transitions between scenes.

New Characters
I’ve also added more character sprites! The following characters are now available in the game:

• Emi

• Hanako

• Rin

• Lilly

• Misha

• Shizune

• Kenji

• Yuuko

• Nurse

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Gameplay Improvements
I’ve begun migrating all in-game variables from the original Ren’Py scripts directly into code. This is a big step forward because it allows:

• Dialogue Progression: You can now make choices during conversations, and your decisions will affect the story as you continue.

• Branching Scenarios: Choices are beginning to have consequences, and this functionality is already available in the latest demo.

While this system is still a Work In Progress, it’s exciting to see the gameplay taking shape!

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